The Company's Sword: The East India Company and the Politics of Militarism, 1644–1858 (Critical Perspectives on Empire)

Examines the role of the East India Company's independent armies in the colonial government of South Asia. Cover Half-title page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents List of Figures List of Maps Acknowledgments A Note on Spelling and Place Names Maps Introduction The Company in Eighteenth-Century India The Company in British National Politics Soldiers as Subjects 1 Forging the Sword 1.1 Military Force in Early Colonial Charters 1.2 A Moor to Defend the Empire? 1.3 Military Service and Colonial Belonging 1.4 Spectacular Sepoys 2 The Sepoy’s Oath 2.1 Military Economies: North and South 2.2 The Carnatic Wars 2.3 The Miserable Musket-Bearer 2.4 The Commandant King 2.5 A New Military Economy 2.6 The Spirit of Desertion 3 Mercenaries, Diplomats, and Deserters 3.1 European Mercenaries in India’s Military Economy 3.2 Hat-Men in the Service of the Circar 3.3 Between the Circar and the Company 3.4 The Rise of the Residents 4 The Other Revolution of 1776 4.1 The Marginalization of Madras 4.2 The Conquest of Thanjavur 4.3 “High Time to Correct the System” 4.4 Between Civil and Military Despots 4.5 “A Chain of Cantonments” 4.6 The Power of Court Martial 5 The Empire Preserved 5.1 “Trouble and Ill-Conveniences Inconceivable” 5.2 “Golden Dreams of Eastern Magnificence” 5.3 By the Same Loyalty and in the Same Cause 5.4 A Brotherhood of Officers 5.5 A Military Public and an “Unmilitary” Protest 6 Stratocracy 6.1 When Mars Lost His Sword 6.2 The Mutiny at Vellore 6.3 Syed Ibrahim’s Tomb 6.4 The Rights of Military Men 6.5 “Not Long Before All White Men Gone” 6.6 The Officers’ Triumph 7 Breaking the Officers’ Sword 7.1 Paramountcy and Persistence 7.2 “Nothing Less Than Another Vellore” 7.3 Rebellion and the Restoration of Colonial Order 7.4 The Officers’ Failure 7.5 “John Company Is Dead” Conclusion Bibliography I Archival Sources II Printed Material (Pre-1900) III Printed Material (Post-1900) Index In the late eighteenth century, it was a cliché that the East India Company ruled India 'by the sword.' Christina Welsch shows how Indian and European soldiers shaped and challenged the Company's political expansion and how elite officers turned those dynamics into a bid for 'stratocracy' - a state dominated by its army. Combining colonial records with Mughal Persian sources from Indian states, The Company's Sword offers new insight into India's eighteenth-century military landscape, showing how elite officers positioned themselves as the sole actors who could navigate, understand, and control those networks. Focusing on south India, rather than the Company's better-studied territories in Bengal, the analysis provides a new approach, chronology, and geography through which to understand the Company Raj. It offers a fresh perspective of the Company's collapse after the rebellions of 1857, tracing the deep roots of that conflict to the Company's eighteenth-century development "The Company's Sword reveals how the British East India Company acquired a private army and how Indian and European soldiers shaped the Company's expansion. Tracing the institutional development of the Company's armies alongside the rebellions that challenged its growth, Christina Welsch uncovers the militarism at the heart of colonial India"-- Provided by publisher